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Strange Triad: True Stories of North Carolina Hauntings, Ghosts, and the Macabre
Strange Triad: True Stories of North Carolina Hauntings, Ghosts, and the Macabre Excerpt: A Word from the Author By: Peter Zedmore A Word from the Author When I initially set out to write this book during my Senior year at The University of North Carolina – Greensboro, I wanted to take a different approach from the typical laying down of facts, attempting to debunk or prove stories of the strange things that lurk in the remote, dark parts of the Triad area of North Carolina. Instead, I chose to focus on the stories as told by residents, in their own words with my own descriptions of setting. I leave the validity of the stories themselves, to you, dear reader to discern. Whether it's a recounting of a visit to Payne Road, just outside of Winston Salem by a blue collar man in his forties, the tale of a chance meeting with a young girl by the name of Lydia who was said to have died in the 1920's on her way home from a dance and now hitches rides home only to vanish at her destination, or the story of a tent revival that appears every few years, vanishing by morning, and leaving only a strange string of occurrences in its wake. Mainly, I chose to focus on the stories because the stories themselves, the art in their telling is as much a part of the landscape as the subject matter. I wanted to focus every bit as much on the people and how they told what they had experienced, as what they experienced. In the end, I feel like it worked, but once again, the validity of such a claim is in the hands of the reader. So with that, I leave you these stories and the hope that if nothing else, they help pass a lazy summer afternoon, spark a conversation with friends over coffee, or just maybe leave you a little nervous when you're driving over that creepy bridge in the middle of no where. Best Regards, Peter Zedmore Greensboro North Carolina July 17th, 2012 The Man In Black Chapter 3 Excerpt The Man In Black The first time I met Willie Sherman, he pointed a shotgun at me. Not because I was threat persay, but because everything was a threat. The man reeked of paranoia, his eyes darting back and forth, his body trembling with anxiety. Staring down the barrel of a loaded twelve guage, I fought for a moment to swallow my heart, to meet the man's eyes, and try to put forth an outward bearing of relaxed good intentions. “Mister Sherman?” I asked him, not really too share on what else to say and mostly because I was afraid anything else would make his already twitching fingers twitch a bit too hard on the important part of the rifle in his hand. “Ayeah.” “I'm Peter Zedmore, we spoke earlier today on the phone,” I explained. He narrowed his eyes at me in suspicion, the gun still trained right around my throat. “About -” “I know what it's about, just ain't sure I wanna talk to you about it no more,” He said. I could see now, after looking at him, that he was tired. Not the sort of tired that comes from age, though there was probably that too, but the sort of tired that comes from extended periods of no sleep. His face, the skin turned almost to leather by long years under the sun, was sunken. Heavy black bags hung under his eyes. His whole body, beneath the anxious jitters, seemed to radiate a general sense of weariness, of a man that just wants to hang up his hat, kick off his shoes, and take a long nap after a hard day's work. After a veritable eternity he lowered the gun, and motioned towards the porch. His home was a simple affair. It was a small, roughly held together building that was little more than a shack at the end of a dirt road in a small town outside of Thomasville, North Carolina, near High Rock Lake. He had found me on the internet, when I began advertising for stories for the book. His, I must admit, was a new one on me. As we sat down, he pulled two cokes, both in glass bottles from a small metal pail of ice beside his chair. He popped the tops, using his car keys and passed me one. “You know I ain't keen on telling this story,” He said, eyeing the borders of his property nervously. “Why's that?” “Cause the story ain't over,” he said taking a long, slow sip of coke. “I still see 'em.” “Him?” Willie nodded, slowly, running a gnarled hand over the five o'clock shadow on his cheek. His hair had mostly gone to white, creating an odd contrast with his sun darkened face. “Yep. Him. The Man in Black. An no sir, I ain't talking about Mister Cash, rest his soul.” “So tell me what happened,” I said. For a long moment Willie stared at the edge of his property, eyes distant, face slack, a man lost in thought. The coke bottle in his hand was sweating small rivers of condensation, rocking back and forth in a steady tremor. When he settled his eyes on me, it was enough to almost make my blood run cold, just that steady gaze. I've heard Vietnam Vets talk about the look, but this was something different, this was the look of a man terrified to close his eyes out of fear of what may grab him, and even more terrified to keep them open and see it coming. “It was probably ten years ago, that I saw him. Out near Brown Summit to be exact. I was a surveyor, before I retired. The guy who worked with me, Otis, he'd called in sick. Had a case of the trots, or so he said.” We each took a sip from our bottles, setting them on the small table that rested between us. In the distance, the sun was starting to set, casting an eerie sort of haze over the field that stretched out towards the trees at the edge of his property. “What'd he look like?” “Son, you gonna let me tell my story or what?” “Sorry, go ahead,” I said, slightly ashamed at my own eagerness. “Anyways, was about noon, maybe one o'clock in the afternoon. I remember I was miserable cause it was raining, and cold. Maybe October or November. I was setting up, and there he was....bout hunnerd, hunnerd and fifty yards away. Tall as the day is long, dressed all in black, fingers bout ten feet long, all twisting and snapping.” “What happened?” “Nothin, he just stood there. Made me feel sick, sick'er than hell. Just looking at him, it was wrong. I don't know how else to describe it, just wrong.” Willie shuddered, a visible, almost electric reaction. He drained the coke from his bottle, grabbed another from the pail and opened it. The breath that wheezed out of him was a long, slow sound of relief and utter terror, all at once. “I looked away, try'n get my bearings. When I looked back, he was gone. Just gone. No sign. There was no where he coulda gone, we were in the middle of nowheres, but sure as shit, he was gone.” “So he just vanished?” “Vanished, teleported, had Scotty beam him up, hell I don't know. All I know is he weren't there anymore.” “So was that the end of it?” “God, I wish,” Willie said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He held the second coke between his hands. He looked like a man collecting himself, summoning up his courage. “Saw him again, few days later.” “Where?” “Right over there,” Willie said, pointing to the edge of his field, the same place at the treeline where he'd kept his eyes for most of my visit. “You know what the worst part is?” He asked me. “What's that?” “He ain't never left. He keeps coming back, few nights, few months, no sort of schedule, he's just there. Standing there, watching me,” Willie said, his voice a near whisper, “'cept he ain't got eyes. And I know one day, I'm look up in my bed and that bastard's gonna be standing there, ready to do whatever it is he does.” “And what do you think he does?” I asked. Willie looked at me, a long, hard stare that went more through me than at me. For a long moment he didn't say anything, the only sounds was the chirping of crickets as the sun sank lower towards the horizon. “I don't wanna talk about this anymore, least not today,” Willie said finally, “Think it's time I called it a night.” The goodbyes were less formal than the shotgun to the face aspect of our meeting. Brief handshakes and a promise that we'd talk more at a later date about the “man” that Willie saw. He apologized for ending things on such a short note, but assured me that he'd fill in blanks, talk about it more when we sat down again. Willie, well, we never talked again. I went back, but his house was empty. Everything was still in it's place, the ice bucket now a bucket of water with two floating, unopened cokes. His fields had grown up a bit, and the house had started to already fall into a state of disrepair, which wasn't uncommon given its apparent age. After a bit more research, I've found a few reports of people around the world that claim to have seen such a man, though most of them are easily chalked up to imagination. Willie though, Willie was genuinely scared. Category:Setting Category:History